I am planning on building a new pc and would like your input. I usually play strategy games such as Civilization V and Starcraft II. I do a little photo/video editing. The only components that I will reuse is my keyboard/mouse, 1 TB HD for data, and monitor: ASUS VE246H Black 24" 1920 x 1080 2ms. I don't have any preference on the following items, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

You have a good list of parts there, but for the most part, you can find better value parts for your build and save a few bucks. Lets see what we can shave off.

The mobo you selected is a great one and offers a lot of features, however, I'd look at the incredible value of the Asrock z68 Extreme 3 Gen3. It offers everything the bigger Asus board has except for 2200 OC ram support and one less x16 pcie slot (which actually only runs at x4). The catch is that its so popular at the $125 price that it's OOS right now; it was avaliable to buy just a few days ago so hopefully newegg will get some more in or find another retailer.

As for CPU cooler, save the $10 and get the Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus. They changed a few things and made the EVO better, but its so minor that you should just save the $10. It does use a better pipe layout and a more efficient, quieter fan that pushes more air, but you are talking like maybe .5C better. The 212+ is already damn good.

And screw paying close to $100 for a 600w power supply. Honestly, if you only plan to keep it a single gpu card system even a decent 500w will do. Your system (even with an OC cpu) will still be around the 350-400w usage. That 6870 uses around 150w on load; very power efficient. Here's the [/url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341016]OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w modular 80 plus[/url] PSU for $45 AR. I can't give OCZ any higher praise for having great quality and being really cheap; best value really plus OCZ bought the PC Power and Cooling company so its essentially very similar to their stuff, which also have been top notch for the past years. I have that 500w, 700w and now a 850w that all run perfectly. Same goes with similar wattage Cooler Master PSU', they are also great value. Actually a great deal on a PSU is the older Corsair CX600 V2 600w 80 plus for $45AR.

While the Kingston HyperX is a decent SSD, its a horrible value at $230 considering you can get the best and fastest ssd on the market in the 120gb size for much much less. Look no further than the underrated Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 120GB; and its only $185 for the latest gen ssd. It performs faster, has higher IOPS and is more reliable than even the fast Vertex 3 drives. But honestly, the SSD should be the last part on your build. While its a great addition and really helps with load times of programs and the OS, you really have to way in the cost of shorting your load times to actually using the $185 on a better video card. Although, its nice to use the SSD for a scratch disk when photo editing, but honestly, its not necessary. You might net better results in photo/video edits with 16gb of ddr3 ram over an ssd.

I have given you the pro's and cons of the SSD so you have to choose if you want to save the money and beef up the gpu. The 6870 is a great budget card and really worth it, but for another $100 more, you can get the better 6950 2gb card for around the $250 area or the 6970 for $330. While I like my nvidia cards, the vanilla 560 is hard to justify the $190 price tag when the 6870's will beat it for less. The 560ti would be a more appropriate choice, but you are then talking about a $220 card vs a $170. It's hard to match up the current line of nvidia and amd cards since they all perform between each other.

Out of those four, I'd probably pick the MSi Twin Frorz II since it uses one of the best after market coolers for stock and MSi uses military grade level II components on its pcb, which really helps out in reducing your overall temps of the board. The Asus is a monster and it will be a good 1 card solution if you want something that crazy and really want to OC the snot out of your gpu. Even then, I'd still look at a 2 card slot solution over a 3; its just overkill.

The newer MSi Twin Frozr III 6950 2gb model, is just a hair better than the older II's; plus they come stock clocked at 850mhz compared to the 800 of everyone else minus the Asus's small 10mhz bump at 810. You can literally run the III at 6970 speeds without any issues and if you get one that isn't laser die locked for the extra steam processors, you could get a bit of added boost in performance. Its really hit or miss at this point.

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